


Space Oddity

by god_is_undead



Category: Cowboy Bebop, Dragon Ball, Multi-Fandom, Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alien Abduction, Armitage Hux Has Issues, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossover, Gen, How Do I Tag, Hux Has No Chill, Hux is Not Nice, I Solemnly Swear That I Am Up To No Good, I have other stories why am I not working on those, Multiple Crossovers, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Other Fandoms Not Mentioned in Tags, POV Multiple, POV Original Character, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Vicious has Issues, Violence, What Have I Done, What Was I Thinking?, Why Did I Write This?, and vice versa, at least not ones who think they can tell them what to do, can our heroes get through a meal without trying to kill each other, emotionally fucked up people, gangsters do not like generals, hyperspace sextant, i swear to god im trash, i swear to god this isn't a love triangle fic, living their emotionally fucked up lives, lol no, okay anyone really, psychology is fun, set to get bigger in scope, they teach you weird shit in First Order summer camp I guess, under bizarre circumstances, various other characters and fandoms to be added as necessary, what the fuck even is a hyperspace sextant and why does Hux know how to use one
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-27
Updated: 2017-03-27
Packaged: 2018-10-11 15:32:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10468278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/god_is_undead/pseuds/god_is_undead
Summary: Abducted from earth, Lib is sold on a curiosities black market to an otherwordly menagerie. Come to find out, it can definitely get weirder: many of her fellow exhibits are from fictional universes (literally not enough pruno in existence...). When escape goes wrong, she is stranded on an ancient shuttle in unknown space, with two very different but very dangerous people, and no idea how to get home.Basis of the story is an episode of Are You Afraid of the Dark: The Tale of the Closet Keepers that has gotten some serious airtime over that shark. I also really could not resist giving stereotypical anime names to the chapters. I do what I want, and making myself useful is clearly not a thing I want to do.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I am working on Points of Authority, but the bastard thing is one chapter in and I’m in a Meereenese Knot because of how unremittingly fucked up politics are, lol. It’s slow going, but I'm trying. This is a far simpler storyline.
> 
> Notes on characterization for Hux and Vicious at the bottom. OC has some details too.
> 
> I'm so proud of myself that I got the word ventral into this story. Hahahaaa.
> 
> This is the first part of a longer series in no particular order, which, yes, I've planned a good deal of. Also, where there is romance, expect it to take a backseat to the overriding plot, since the plot isn't romantically-focused. That and slow burn doesn't cover it—it's positively gelid. Seriously, you might as well forget it for now. I'll warn for it later when it becomes a factor. I mention it now for the benefit of those people who can't stand such things, and don't like starting a story only to stop later. But I'm serious--this isn't some kind of creepy love triangle thing; nobody is as yet anywhere near any kind of an emotional state for anything like romance. Sex? Yeah sure that's one thing. But let's just get through a meal without attempting murder before jumping on the love train.

It took Lib a few minutes to realize that this wasn't some kind of Candid Camera prank, but she soon cottoned on to the idea that she had been kidnapped by aliens. Like as in, _actually kidnapped by real, live, aliens_.

This she accepted rather easily, if in a subdued sort of way: she had already been convinced that intelligent life had to exist somewhere in the galaxy (it sure as shit didn't exist in Texas), and alien abductions had been a science fiction trope for decades. Aliens, fine—Alien abduction, fine—She was pretty sure the government was hiding stuff in Area 51 anyway, so it checked out.

(Or else, she was going to sit here really fucking quietly and watch them, and not let on that she had actually been convinced that aliens were real, and thus save her the embarrassment of having that posted on YouTube where everybody and their dog could see it. _Good plan. Hedge your bets_.)

Anyway, what was more difficult was the absurdity that her two eldritch captors were attempting to speak to her with the help of what was apparently a phrasebook through the clear barrier of her cell as she sat cross-legged on the deck.

A Chinese phrasebook.

Points for effort, but Lib spoke exactly zero Chinese.

They were visibly becoming frustrated, until one of them threw up his tentacles and spun around, snarling something that sounded suspiciously angry enough to be cursing.

Lib watched this tensely, the nervous, rapid, heavy thud of her heart in her chest wrapped in a more or less motionless package. It wasn't like she was in a position to do anything else except watch, and panicking didn’t seem productive.

* * *

 

*

“This is supposed to be the most widely fucking spoken language on its planet, and _it doesn't speak it?_ ” Xaa hissed irritably, throwing a disgusted look at the hairless, fleshy thing seated with its legs folded on his deck, staring at him with big eyes. Ugh. Humans. They were _so creepy_.

“Maybe we can try the second most widely spoken language?” Ammu suggested, peering down the human. It stared back, head tilted to the side with an almost weird calm.

Some humans had reacted far more strongly over the years, some had even gone catatonic, but this one had made very little trouble for them upon waking up, hadn’t said a word. It took a look around, blinked twice at them in stunned disbelief, rolled its thin shoulders inside its clothing, sat up and folded its legs under it, and waited for them to make the first move with the look of something whose sole comment boiled down to _huh, well, this is happening_.

“I'm betting it's just slow. Do you think they pay as much for slow humans? Well it doesn't matter—it's not like they can tell if they can't even speak to it!”

Ammu wasn't quite so sure. The creature studied them with observant clarity, not incomprehension.

“We don't even have very many words in _espanya_ ,” Xaa muttered.

Ammu carefully said, “ _Hola, como estas?_ ”

Comprehension lit in the human’s green eyes and it sat up a little straighter.

“ _Muy bien. Y tu?_ ” it replied, peeling its lips back in an expression that startled both of them.

Xaa and Ammu glanced at each other.

“What did you say to it? Why is it baring its teeth at us?”

Ammu flicked frantically through his notes, searching for the part on human social behavior.

“I just said hello, how are you, that shouldn't have been offensive!”

“ _Como se llama?_ ” the human asked. “ _Donde esta aqui? Habla Ingles. No habla Español._ ” After that it went on a sentence or so in another tongue.

“What is it saying?” Xaa demanded.

“‘Do not be immediately alarmed if a human bares its teeth at you,’” Ammu read. “‘Although in some human subcultures’--how many do they have? It's one lousy planet!--‘it can contextually be considered a lack of aggression, thus defensive, many humans often bare their teeth to show affection or friendliness.’” Ammu glanced at Xaa. “Humans are strange. Nobody else does that.”

“Gods and maii, I hate these things. They give me the heebie jeebies.” Xaa scowled and gestured at his face. “What's with those hair-stripes over their eyes? And the males grow hair on the lower half of the face. Why? Why can't it be a normal furry species and grow hair everywhere? And we had another female once—and I told you, we shouldn’t pick up the females! They bleed randomly.”

The human had fallen silent during their conversation, eyes curious and seeking.

Ammu went back to the phrase list.

“ _Hola, como estas?_ ”

The human blinked and made a strange face.

“ _Hola_ ,” it replied.

“It said more the first time!” Xaa cried.

“ _Habla_ Ingles,” it stressed, slowly. “Er... _pardon_.”

“What did that mean?”

Ammu finally found what he was looking for, after a frantic search through the limited Spanish vocabulary.

“I'm pretty sure it's trying to say it speaks...English. That's what Ingles means. Says so right here.”

“What the fuck is _English?_ ”

Ammu had to look for it. “It's the third most spoken language on earth.”

“Oh, the third most spoken language on earth,” Xaa drawled. “Great. Do we have any of that?”

“Yeah, some, although it’s probably going to be crap,” Ammu replied. He fiddled with his pad for a moment. “ _Hello_.” The human startled, blinking hugely in recognition.

“ _Hello_ ,” it replied, with a kind of hesitant caution. “ _Where am I?_ ”

It took Ammu a moment to find this question. He had never attempted to speak English before, and found it somewhat irritating and hard to pronounce.

“ _I will to describe for you your future._ ”

The human’s brow-stripes rose; Ammu had no idea what thought that was intended to express, but he went ahead anyway.

“ _You will to be sold_.”

The human’s eyes narrowed; Ammu didn't need a guidebook to tell him what _that_ meant.

“ _Please to try and ensure you are safely._ ”

“ _Excuse me?_ ” the human retorted, rising to its feet.

Ammu glanced oddly at the definition—excuse me was a plea for forgiveness.

“ _What do you mean, you're going to sell me?_ ”

Ammu could find individual words and pick out their meaning, but all together they made no sense. He glanced at Xaa.

“Don't look at me, I don't speak this backwater bullshit.”

“ _You will to be richly_ ,” Ammu said. The word were not words in whatever script its kind used, they were literally phonetic constructs. Ammu had no idea where one word ended or began, or what the individual sounds meant unless he went and looked the specific words up.

It wrinkled its nose and looked at Ammu in distinct confusion. “ _What? Look, man, I appreciate you guys getting Lonely Planet, Earth Edition and all, but that made no sense._ ”

“ _I don't understand_ ,” Ammu said.

“ _Why, are, you, selling, me?_ ”

“ _Richly_ ,” Ammu said. The word meant excess of profits, right?

“ _You want to get rich?_ ” it said, frowning. “ _I...seven billion people on earth and_ I'm _worth money? Yeah right_...”

Ammu was officially lost. He glanced at Xaa for help, but Xaa only rattled sullenly and hissed his impatience.

“Who cares if it really understands? It'll figure it out eventually, once we get to Thalla. Or maybe it doesn’t. Who cares? Tell it we're going to feed it and look after it—and that it better keep itself clean. I don't plan on cleaning any shit off the walls.”

“ _Please to be making yourself comfortably and cleanly,_ ” Ammu read, mimicking the sounds, but with no idea what he was saying or whether it was understandable, “ _Longly ride_.”

“ _What?_ ”

“ _Please yourself_.”

The human jerked as if touched by a live wire, and its eyes opened wide enough that Ammu was concerned they were going to pop right out. “ _What?_ ”

“What did you say to it?” Xaa asked, looking at Ammu curiously.

“I just said to be calm and look after itself.”

“I don’t think that’s what it got, but it's not going anywhere.” Xaa glared at it. “Let's go check if we've got the go-ahead to pass through Hagee space yet. We can feed it later.”

The human stood up when they started to leave, even shouted at them as they stepped out into the ventral passageway, but when the door slid shut all sound was blocked out. Xaa was visibly relieved to get away from it, and let out a rattling sigh as they walked to the bridge.

“I don't even understand why you're even trying to speak to it,” he complained.

“The guide says that humans are social animals, and that leaving them in isolation does funny things to their minds. It's important to give them some kind of contact during transport, otherwise it might actually get sick or become violent towards us or itself.”

Xaa rattled his irritation vehemently. “ _Humans_. Ugh. They're so needy and fragile. Why couldn't we have just stuck to tapprins? They don't need this kind of coddling. And they're easier to get—they're closer to the Corinthin border of the Preserve.”

“Because humans are rare. We're recouping our losses for this trip four times over with the price we'll get. We'd have to get three tapprins for one human.”

“Yeah, but it's a lot easier to get caught, too. We're looking at twenty Rafaen years in prison if the gendarmes find us.” They hefted each other up out of the ventral passageway, taking a ladder directly up into the main arterial corridor that led down the spine of their ship.

Ammu sighed at him. “Yes, but if these compartments do the job they're supposed to do, then we won't need to worry about that, will we? We'll just get slapped with a fine and escorted out of the Preserve.”

Once Xaa had safely secured the hatch leading down into the lower levels of the ship—the ones that, officially, didn't exist, and hadn't before some very illegal modifications—they two walked the short distance from there to the bridge, where they found a waiting message containing a Hageen transit approval.

* * *

 

*

Lib threw up her hands and huffed in disbelief at the closed door outside her cell.

 _Well, that was underwhelming_. Appearances aside—the Thermians from Galaxy Quest probably came closest, looking like melted, landlubbing mutant squids—the way they interacted was more like an old married couple than anything else.

 _Are you_ seriously _complaining about a lack of anal probing and vivisection? Because I can think of a few ways in which that is fucked up_.

 _Also, you_ do _realize that old married couples can do things to you, right? You are_ confined in a cell _. Maybe the people they’re going to sell you to will vivisect you. It's like you never read Ordinary Men, or anything else about how people can do terrible things and still not have a card-carrying douchebag personality_.

Lib made a slow and careful inspection of her cell, growing increasingly frustrated. She mapped out its contents, touching most of what she could: though the lights above were bright, the walls were made of a grainy gray composite that reminded her of an airplane's skin, stained and old and a little ragged, but smooth and without tears. The clear wall of her cell had seen better days. It could have used some Windex. It felt like plastic, but strangely cold for the relatively temperate climate in the cell, and when she tapped her nails on it, it sounded like metal. Clear aluminum? Kicking it didn’t get her anywhere.

Nothing she saw or felt could be pried open or beaten into submission, even the squat toilet didn't have toilet paper (so what the _fuck_ was she expected to use instead?) but...

Lib turned sharply, pressing her fist into her mouth, tucking her other arm against her belly and chewing her lip. She was rigid, trying to suppress her trembling, the sound of blood pounding in her ears, her shortness of breath. No help was forthcoming from this cell, there was no panel she could pry open to get into the ventilation ducts. The ceiling was low and she could just touch the grating if she stood on her toes, but jumping and smacking at it did nothing except hurt her hand and her ankles.

 _If I don't figure out how to get out of here I might end up like a guest of Unit 731_.

She was crying, big, upset tears. When had she started to cry?

_Where am I? Where are they taking me—they're going to sell me, fine, but where does that leave me? Literally—WHERE?_

These guys were middlemen. How long did she have until she reached the main event? What happened then?

Lib slumped down against the wall, facing away from the clear barrier, drained; she knew she ought to keep it together—stay calm, wasn't that what you were supposed to do in situations like this?—Well it was so easy to say that, another thing to do it! Part of her calm previously had just been getting through every moment in sequence. Now she had time to come down from that high.

She whimpered, glad that no one else was here to witness this. _Deep breaths_. She would get through this, and when she did, she would still be in this cell.

Unless she wasn't really in this cell. _Am I dreaming? Is this some kind of lucid experience?_

There was only one thing she could think of. Lib bit herself on the back of the wrist until she tasted blood, and she swallowed back a groan of pain as she left off. A bead of red welled up where her canines had dug in, and she licked the blood away, studying the mirrored parabolas of the impressions sullenly.

She put her face in her hands and them smoothed them back, pushing her fingers through her hair and laced her fingers behind her neck; she held herself curled up with her head between her knees, trying not to vomit and shivering.

“Fuck,” she whispered. Her voice shook. “ _Fuck_.”

But the lingering pain did one thing; it pierced the haze of her thoughts, and she found herself calming despite herself, and the nauseating reality that she wasn't getting out of here anytime soon, at least not on her terms. _I might die in here. I’ll probably die wherever it is I’m going_.

 _Who is going to feed my cat? Balerion hates being left alone_...

* * *

 

*

Ammu came alone into the holding cell spaces a little later, while Xaa was on the bridge keeping an eye on the short-swell scanners.

Ammu clutched his guidebook and the food as he faced the human, who stared back at him intently, standing so close to the plastine barrier that now Ammu hung back. The first time, it had sat very near to the back of the holding cell. When Ammu stepped inside this time, it stood right up and went to the very front, and if there had been holes in the barrier it could have easily reached and put its tiny, fleshy digits through them.

Its pale face seemed flushed, particularly around its eyes, which appeared somewhat swollen, turning its greenish eyes an absolutely acid shade.

_Oh, no—is it sick already? It’s not contagious, is it?_

“ _Hello_ ,” it said slowly and carefully.

Ammu stared at it, taken aback. He had to check to make sure of what that meant again. _Hello, Hello_ —the all-purpose greeting.

**Author's Note:**

> This story gets more interesting when Hux and Vicious show up (which they do, next chapter), and if the weird details about the aliens seem odd, well, they're really not relevant…yet. Remember that ‘wider story’ bit? Yeah. If/when I get around to it. Bear with me a little while; I have most of this story planned out already.
> 
> SPECULATORY NOTES ON CHARACTERIZATION of HUX AND VICIOUS:
> 
> I had a lot more written about these two and cut 99% of it out. Ha.  
> Hux is, well; the way I see him is a giant clusterfuck of YOU WILL ((TAKE ME SERIOUSLY)) OBEY or I will fuck your life up with a side of incidental, actual, seriously disturbing competence. He’s young, he’s insecure about his command and himself—otherwise why make him a bastard in the first place and pretty much make his dad a dick and call him useless—and he feels the need to continually and aggressively prove himself. He’s as much a fanboy for the Imperials as Ren is for Darth Vader.
> 
> Phasma is the lone adult on that ship, I swear. Lol. 
> 
> Vicious is an incredibly difficult character. The sticking point is in whether people consider Vicious as having emotions to begin with, and if he does, whether those emotions are legitimate or rational (read: not crazy…because I have read fics where he is unhinged). I assume both, that is, that he is both rational and he is able to express himself in a way that makes sense. In no way am I saying he is not responsible for every ounce of fucked up shit he did (Gren, anyone?)--but I like my monsters human, thank you very much. I hate the whole “crazy” shtick.
> 
> Terrible things and people are so much worse when they're not crazy. Crazy is just an easy means of avoiding any real attempt to understand people, and of othering them so you feel better about yourself.
> 
> The point is, Vicious might be the poster child for mean, selfish, untrustworthy bastard, but the assumption here is he's not crazy. Hux is terribly logical—and that's what's so unpleasantly implacable about him. That boy drank the shit out of the Kool Aid. He operates on that predication.
> 
> The thing is, I find their characters really interesting. 
> 
> The OC:  
> Weird collection of facts: Pottermore house, Slytherin, personality type, introvert. Older than Vicious and younger than Hux. Teeeeechnically a version of an OC featuring in one of the other fics I have on AO3. Whatever, I doubt anyone really cares or is even going to notice. Full name: Liberty Valance. Her mother was high on a fuckload of hospital-administered narcotics when she gave birth.
> 
> (For perspective, Vicious is 27, Hux is 34. Per canon.)


End file.
